Colombia's top prosecutor says he will continue pushing for legal action against a Costa Rican couple found with $480,000 of alleged Colombian guerrilla cash in a safe box in their home.

Costa Rica has said the couple – esteemed university professor Francisco Gutiérrez and his wife Cruz Prado, also an academic and former labor union activist – will not be extradited.

However, Colombian Chief Prosecutor Mario Iguarán told the Costa Rican daily Al Día he will send this country information that should lead to an investigation here of Gutiérrez and Prado on their home turf.

“Although you (Costa Rican authorities) do not penalize for financing terrorism, we will give you elements to allow an investigation for money laundering,” he said.

The Tico Times reported last month that the couple had opened their home in Heredia, north of San José, about 11 years ago to guerrilla leaders without knowing the true identities of the Colombian men, who had told the couple they were here to engage with the United States in peace talks. The men turned out to be top commanders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The couple also alleged they knew nothing about the money until police busted open the safe last month.

“It's not a crime to have rotting money,” Prado said, referring to the weathered, brittle bills hiding in the safe.

Colombia's chief prosecutor does not agree.

“It's money that they (Gutiérrez and Prado) haven't been able to justify to the news media, and who's claiming ownership of that money? Nothing more and nothing less than the FARC,” Iguarán told Al Día.

The interview ran yesterday, the morning after Colombia had issued a communiqué that said it has found no ties between Costa Rican politicians and Colombian guerrillas in computers that belonged to FARC's No. 2 chief, Raúl Reyes, whom Colombian military shot down in a March 1 attack in Ecuadorean territory.

Iguarán reiterated the claim of no political connections in the interview.

Yet the opposite claim, that there purportedly are “political sectors” here linked to “drug-trafficking” Colombian rebels caused Costa Rica's former public security minister, Fernando Berrocal, on Sunday to lose his job.

Pressed by President Oscar Arias and several top officials and legislators, Berrocal later said there wasn't a specific list of names of politicians connected to the FARC, but he nevertheless maintained that the rebel group has infiltrated this country on a large scale.

An article published Monday in the Colombian daily El Tiempo reported that “Colombian intelligence has identified from five to seven names in Costa Rica of people collaborating with the guerrillas.”

However, Rodrigo Arias, Costa Rica's minister of the presidency, said yesterday, “We have no official communication from Colombia on this,” according to newswire ACAN-EFE.

He also announced the date for Friday for a fact-finding mission to Colombia. The committee is made up of officials including Vice President Laura Chinchilla, who replaced Berrocal as security minister, and is expected to get to the bottom of the alleged FARC infiltration in Costa Rica.